Neighborhood plan sent to county

By ALEX STRICKLAND / Bigfork Eagle

After three-and-a-half-years, more than 160 public meetings and incalculable hours, the Bigfork Neighborhood Plan revision is headed off to the Flathead County Planning and Zoning Office and could be approved by commissioners by late summer.

In a joint meeting of the Bigfork Steering Committee and the Bigfork Land Use Advisory Committee on Thursday, members reviewed public comment from the previous week's evening public workshop and voted to forward the plan to the county level.

The only change made to the plan was a clarification of wording in section 9.4 that dealt with the environmental constraint requirements of low-impact commercial developments.

The plan will now go into the Planning Department's rotation and a staff member will write a staff report on the plan and present it to BLUAC at a regular monthly meeting, as they would for any Bigfork-related application.

Once BLAUC votes to approve the plan, which they almost certainly will given their involvement throughout the process, it will go before the Flathead County Planning Board. Once approved at that level, there is a mandatory 30-day public comment period before it can go before the Flathead County Commissioners for approval. Assuming the commissioners give the plan their blessing, another 30-day public comment period must pass before the plan can be ratified.

Planning and Zoning Office Assistant Director B.J. Grieve, who has worked closely with BSC and BLUAC throughout the process, said that by the time the plan finds a place on all the boards' busy schedules and the comment periods pass, it would likely be late summer before the process was complete.

The new neighborhood plan will replace the original plan, created by the community in 1993. That plan helps planning staff and the various boards make decision about Bigfork's growth. Montana State Law dictates that an application cannot be denied solely based on noncompliance with a neighborhood plan, but a recent Montana Supreme Court decision regarding a proposed gravel pit in West Valley near Kalispell, gave more weight to such plans.

Doug Averill, who was heavily involved with the original plan in 1993, said the Bigfork plan set the bar for subsequent neighborhood plans in Flathead Valley and had, in the mid-1990's, encouraged county planners to create such a document for all of the Flathead County. About $500,000 was raised for that project, he said, but it never came to fruition because of public opposition.

Shelley Gonzales, who has been a driving force in the revision of the plan, said that the overarching goal was to create "predictability" in the growth of Bigfork.

"We're almost there," she said.